Nowadays,
governments try to listen to citizen’s voice from the internet. For example, American
government set up Whitehouse website for the netizens to present their view. It
allows citizens to start and spread petitions, promising that any entreaties
that get a certain signatures would receive an ‘official response’.
Democratic
refers to the institutionalization of democracy, it become self-sustaining and
secure from the threat of authoritarian regression and considered as “the only
game in town”. (Linz & Stepan, 1996)Although it do like this, the
problem cannot be solve follow the netizens voice. The internet makes some
political activity easier. But it does do the real effect. In actual, Whitehouse
website is more like a public relation platform. They selective answering and
long response time for the Westboro petition, having long passed its ‘merits a
response’ threshold had not got the replay.The petition to reduce gun violence
only gets boilerplate answer. (Garber, 2013) No matter good or bad, White
House's digital petitions represent a republican democracy.
Groshek’s
(2009) cross-national analysis of relationship between progressive internet
penetration and democratizen between 1994 and 2003 suggests the internet
democratization is decided by the level of democracy of countries. The network
of globalization also gets advantage and disadvantage. The information can be
more widely spread, it increase the difficult of government to deal with the
problem. More network power makes pressure to them. In order to stop the widely
spread of serious even, government try to blockade the information. It is hard
to say it is good or bad. The different county situation decides the result of digital
democracy.
The
internet democracy influence the government decision is not certainly. However,
the power of digital democracy cannot ignore.
References:
Linz,
J., & Stepan, S. (1996). Towards consolidated democracies. Journal of
Democracy.
Garber, M. (2013) The
White House Petition Site Is a Joke (and Also the Future of
Democracy) The Atlantic. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/the-white-house-petition-site-is-a-joke-and-also-the-future-of-democracy/267238/
Groshek,
J. (2009). The democratic effects of the Internet, 1994–2003: A cross-national inquiry
of 152 countries. The International
Communication Gazette